Untouchable: a Fred Weasley fanfiction

Jam Session

Ginny leads me all the way to the basement of Hogwarts, down the same empty corridor that I roamed about when I discovered the music center.

Speaking of which...

"Hey, Gin," a grinning boy slinging an electric guitar strap over his shoulder greets the redhead stepping into the room before me. "Oh, and-?"

"Guys, this is Jo," Ginny motions to me awkwardly following her in. "Our drummer."

"Wicked," a laid-back boy with short dreadlocks and a casual smile says from behind the keyboard. "I'm Lee."

"You're friends with her brothers, aren't you?" I find myself asking. "The twins?"

"Unfortunately," he jokes. I laugh.

"Nice to meet you, Jo," a blonde girl with a peaceful smile and a wide arrangement of crystal necklaces draped from her neck says. "My name is Luna. Luna Lovegood."

"That's a... strangely beautiful name," I say, blinking.

"Thank you." Luna's smile glows even more.

"She's our lead singer," the boy with the guitar tells me. "I'm Finnigan. You can call me Seamus, though... I feel like as a band, we should be on a first-name basis."

"That's literally what we've been doing this entire time," Lee says bluntly.

While Seamus grins at him, Ginny pats me on the back and motions to the drum set. "You wanna show us what you've got?"

I gulp, looking at the kit. "Uh..."

"Don't be scared," Lee assures me. "We're far from an audience you should be nervous to play in front of. Trust me."

I laugh nervously and force myself to walk to the kit, concluding that I'll have to play in front of them at one point or the other. And they all seem pretty laid-back, so... here goes nothing.

I sit down on the stool and the sticks are already laid out on the snare, so I pick them up and remember the feel of them from when I played around with the kit alone before. When Fred watched me.

Once my hands have securely coiled around the drumsticks and I'm adjusted to the stool, I look up to see Luna, Seamus, Lee, and Ginny all staring at me in anticipation.

"Well then," I say blankly. "I'll just... I'll... start playing."

"Here, let me give you something to play with," Ginny offers, grabbing her bass. She slings it over her shoulder and faces me. "A beat, per se, but... since this is a bass guitar... I guess a note. Seamus, did you plug my amp in too?"

"Yep," Finnigan nods.

She plucks a few strings and the sound is clear and crisp through the amp. After testing the sound, she casually picks a note and begins plucking it at a steady rhythm. I nod along a little to the beat, getting a feel of it, before she seems to nod at me in a go-on-then motion.

I straighten up and inhale before starting off slow and steady. A simple beat that plays along with Ginny's note.

Then, I pick it up a bit, listening closely to the tune playing from the bass; I add more claps of the high-hat, more kicks, more than just an unwavering one. Two. Three. Now it's more of a One. One Two. One. One Two.

I pick up the speed of the high-hat and the snare. I can see Ginny nodding along to the beat with a growing smile, and Seamus's foot-tapping by the drumset.

I pick up the beat again, adding triple beats to the snare, even throwing a crash in when it was getting fast. It sounds good. It sounds really good. Even just playing with a single note on the bass guitar feels so cool. I feel cool.